Corey's Top 10 Movie Flicks of 2015

10. Best of Enemies

In the midst of the amorphous blend of politics and reality television that has - and will continue to - engulf the 2016 US presidential race, Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon's look at ABC's revolutionary debates between conservative William F. Buckley and liberal Gore Vidal is an eye-opening reminder of the staying power of sensational politics. 

9. Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

Another all-too unsettling reminder of cyclical history, Stanley Nelson Jr.'s documentary of the rise and fall of the much-aligned but mostly misunderstood (and violently broken) Black Panther movement that gripped America in the 1960s is electric, angry and honest. Worth watching, if only for the fascinating parallels to today's Black Lives Matter movement.

8. Spotlight

Instantly (and rightfully) heralded as this generation's All The President's Men, Tom McCarthy's journalistic procedural of the Boston Globe's 2001 explosive expose on the Catholic Church's cover-up and complacence of an epidemic of sexual abuse slow-burns its righteous and contemplative energy and offers up tremendous ensemble acting. Yes, Spotlight is critically adored and important, but it is also demanding of our philosophical curiosity and attention. 

7. The Big Short

Adam McKay has always been willing to infuse his absurd comedies with sly political commentary, but with The Big Short, he finally lets his finely sharpened political claws draw blood. A furious and very funny indictment of the financial institutions, regulators, snake-oil salesmen and greed-mongers that nearly took down the world economy with shit-laden securities, McKay and Co's unorthodox film about the unorthodox men that saw through the finance world's pre-2008 parade of delusion is a surprisingly crackerjack entertainment. Memorable, fuming performances from Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling. 

6. Phoenix

In this year's most measured, complex and controlled performance, Nina Hoss commands the screen as a unrecognizable survivor of the Nazi death machine in German director Christian Petzold's wonderful World War II drama, Phoenix. A story of confused identities, allegiances and emotions, this deceptively simple, yet emotionally lush and gripping movie builds to a jaw-dropping climax that you will not see coming. 

5. Amy

With Amy, Asif Kapadia establishes himself as a bonafide documentary auteur, with a style all his own (that utilizes archival footage and voiceover) and a keen eye for what makes us all so tragically human. This, the best documentary I saw in 2015, is a brutally raw exploration of the demons that powered Ms. Winehouse's voice and songwriting, and ultimately led to her untimely demise. Having plumbed the depths of every frame of video and every paparazzi's flash, Kapadia finds the moments that endear us to the lost singer; the passions and convictions we never knew, or perhaps, never thought to notice. 

4. Anomalisa

The word "meticulous" gets bandied about by the film world often when describing particularly well-made films. But there is no other film - animated or live-action - from 2015 that deserves such a descriptor like Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's stunning Anomalisa. The exceptionally slow art of stop-motion animation and detailed facial and kinetic puppetry bring to life the simple story of a depressed author's serendipitous encounter with a woman, unsparing in its wealth of real, raw emotion. There has not been (and perhaps will not ever be) a more beautifully awkward sex scene in an animated movie. 

3. Sicario

Easily the most ulcer-inducing movie experience of the year was thanks to Denis Villeneuve's Sicario, a thoughtful, beautifully rendered suspense flick. Villeneuve, a good Canadian boy whose careful, (*ahem*) meticulous film craft has catapulted him to the top tier of directors specializing in mature, R-rated fare - he will soon do Blade Runner 2. In this one, Emily Blunt is dragged into a classified mission to take down a powerful Mexican drug cartel, or is she? A ripping flick complete with powerful, expertly designed set pieces and a stellar turn from a near-wordless Benicio Del Toro.

2. Ex-Machina

28 Days Later scribe Alex Garland's first foray into directing is a mind-bender of the highest order; a science fiction that blends real anxieties about artificial intelligence, the evolution of our symbiosis with machines and the sexual allure of it all. Alicia Vikander puts in dominant, captivaing work as an android whose mad genius creator (Oscar Isaac) sets her up as a test subject for Domnhall Gleeson's wide-eyed programmer. Unexpectedly intelligent in the best ways possible, Ex-Machina signals the arrival of a badly needed voice in the world of original, ambitious cinema. 

1. Mad Max: Fury Road

The most pure, thrilling, enjoyable cinematic experience of the year, George Miller's magnum opus is the best action flick of this century so far. Adrenaline pumps like nitrous oxide through my veins as I watch this movie. It is complete sensory nirvana as George Miller fills every frame with colour, dirt, grime, fire and the roar of machines coming directly at us. We even give a crap about the plight of our heroes, played with assured, confident badassery by an unstoppable Charlize Theron and a primitive Tom Hardy. Singular images and moments from this movie are so original and crazy but make total sense given the dirty, post-apocalyptic universe; every detail is grounded by sound creative logic. Please: Hollywood and Mr. Miller, make more of this. Thanks.

Review - The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) ****

As the conclusion to director Christopher Nolan's gritty, groundbreaking Dark Knight trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises is a thrilling, but at times slow burning epic that truly stands on its own as a violent, mythical parable for the economic tragedy and pretensions of modern Western civilization. And with a bevy of memorable new characters, including the addition of Anne Hathaway's dangerous, sexy thief Selina Kyle (whom moviegoers might inevitably call Catwoman), Joseph Gordon-Levitt's idealistic street-level Gotham cop John Blake and Tom Hardy's brutal, imposing terrorist Bane, along with grandiose, thunderous action sequences and an absolutely perfect third act, this is one of the year's most vital cinematic experiences.

Inspired by Charles Dickens' classic novel A Tale of Two Cities, Nolan's final Batman film picks up a full eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, with Gotham on the cusp of a major class war and Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne, now a recluse billionaire with a crumbling empire, holed up in the rebuilt Wayne Manor, once destroyed by Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins (a viewing of which is practically essential). Opening with a kinetic mid-air assault on a CIA aircraft and the kidnapping of a Russian nuclear physicist by Bane, a series of events are set in motion including the arrival of Bane and his underground army of ex-mercenaries and Gotham street thugs and a heist on the Gotham stock exchange heist orchestrated by Bane and corrupt businessman John Daggett, forcing Bruce Wayne to don the Cape and Cowl once again. Returning characters include Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon, whose committment to harboring the true nature of Harvey Dent's death in The Dark Knight has led to a dramatic decrease in crime, Morgan Freeman as Wayne Enterprises CEO and weapons genius Lucius Fox and Michael Caine with the most tragic, emotionally affecting portrayal of Wayne family butler Alfred Pennyworth seen yet on screen.

As is clear by now, this is a huge film. A fair number of scenes are purely expository as Nolan, an extremely careful filmmaker when it comes to establishing the stakes and usually labyrinthine-like plots of his films, takes about a full hour setting the stage for what one character calls "Gotham's reckoning." (One might call the film's first hour "slow". Some critics have called it "clunky", but I do not share that sentiment.)  Reckoning, in my view, is the operative word in discussing the journey and fate of Batman et al. The tragic flaws of Nolan's main characters are usually tied in directly to his films' narrative arc. With The Dark Knight Rises, we see Nolan operating on a truly epic, macro level: Nolan has imbibed his Batman trilogy with a gritty, urban realism, wholly separating itself from the standard flash-bang, comic booky tone of modern superhero films by creating Gotham as a functioning, living organism, much like a real city. It is in the realization of Bane's plan that ultimately cuts the city of Gotham off from the rest of civilzation, where the pretensions of modern society are stripped away and characters are forced to confront their most primal fears; post-viewing I was reminded of HBO's seminal television crime drama, The Wire.

It might be a push to compare a Batman film with that of The Wire in this sense, but there is a startling comparison that I'd like make with The Dark Knight Rises. The Wire is a show that details urban decay and systemic inequalities at its very roots, but does so in a way that never loses sight of human ingenuity and the hope that exists in those who have the ability to achieve catharsis and escape the tragedy of political ego driven by the neurotic drive to survive within the system. Here, as laid out clearly in a memorable exchange between Bruce Wayne/Batman and Selina Kyle (another character that seeks catharsis, a literal "clean slate") towards the film's conclusion, we see how Nolan is equating selflessness with salvation:

Selina Kyle: "You don't owe these people anymore. You've given them everything.
Bruce Wayne/Batman: "Not everything. Not yet."

The overt Dickensian aspects of The Dark Knight Rises, encompassing issues of criminality, poverty and the prospect of urban salvation, have been beautifully detailed already by Forrest Wickman at Slate, but also are a true reminder of why Christopher Nolan is revered as one of the most clever filmmakers working today and perhaps one of the absolute best third act directors of all time. The last 20 or so minutes of The Dark Knight Rises is a pulse-pounding symphony of destruction, emotion and enlightenment in a long, disturbing film teeming with fear and tragedy. The Dark Knight Rises is a provocative film that yes, might require patience from the average filmgoer and the most hardcore of Batman aficionados, but as the finale in a trilogy that revitalized a franchise, and as a stand alone cinematic experience, it is a rousing spectacle of action, emotion and catharsis. It deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible.